Directionality and Error Typology in English-Persian Simultaneous Interpreting: A Descriptive-Analytic Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

Interpreting is generally recognized as a demanding cognitive task and is, therefore, likely to involve errors to a lesser or greater degree. These errors would certainly influence the quality of interpreting based on their weight. The present study is an attempt to conduct an error analysis on Persian-into-English and English-into-Persian simultaneous interpreting, as a way to assess interpreting quality, and to investigate whether directionality influences the proportion of the errors. To this end, six presidential speeches delivered at the United Nations General Assembly were selected. The initial 20 minutes from each speech as well as their interpreted versions were transcribed. The transcriptions were then scrutinized to identify and classify the possible errors based on the taxonomy proposed by Flores et al. (2003). The results revealed that the frequency of errors remained almost unchanged in both directions, that is, directionality did not affect the type and number of errors made. Following the data analysis, it was decided that the taxonomy proposed by Flores et al. (2003) could be modified to allow for better categorization of errors.